Delighted with his own wit, Hessinger was smiling broadly.
“And today what are Mrs. Colonel Schumann’s plans for you?”
“I’ll call her after we eat and see how I can be of service.”
“Do that. We can’t afford to have her pissed at you.”
Cronley didn’t think Rachel was pissed at him, but he did suspect that the bloom had begun to come off their roses, so to speak.
After dinner, when they had gone to his room, there had been maybe ten minutes of athletic thrashing about on his bed, followed by maybe sixty seconds of breath-catching. Then Rachel had matter-of-factly announced that she’d better get back to her room, “Tony will probably call.” She had then dressed as quickly as she had undressed and left.
That was probably, he decided, his punishment for his refusal to take her to Kloster Grünau. His reaction to her leaving had been one of relief. Although Ole Willie had answered the call of duty, the cold fact seemed to be that since he now accepted that he really shouldn’t be fucking Rachel, he really didn’t want to.
There were a number of reasons for this, high among them that the late Mrs. James D. Cronley Jr. had startled him by returning to his thoughts while he and Rachel were having dinner. While he didn’t think the Squirt was really riding around on a cloud up there playing a mournful tune on her harp while looking down at him with tear-filled eyes as he wined, dined, and prepared to fuck a married woman who had two children — he wasn’t completely sure she wasn’t, either.
It had also occurred to him that maybe Rachel had also been thinking of her children, or more accurately, as herself as the mother of two children who should not be fucking a young captain. Maybe, he thought, she had for the first time really considered the consequences of their getting caught.
“She wanted me to take the Kapitän and drive her to Kloster Grünau,” Cronley told Hessinger. “She said she would love to be able to tell her husband that she got into the monastery after he couldn’t.”
“Taking her to Kloster Grünau would be even more stupid than taking her to bed. What did you tell her?”
“That I had been ordered to stay in Munich until I heard from Colonel Frade.”
“And she believed you?”
“She didn’t like it, but she believed me.”
“I asked you what do you think she’ll want you to do for her today?”
“Probably take her to the Pullach compound. She wants to see how the Engineers are coming with the service club.”
“A lieutenant and three sergeants from the ASA in Frankfurt were on the Blue Danube last night. Major McClung sent them to install a Collins radio and a SIGABA in the compound. The lieutenant wanted to know where you wanted him to put it. I told him you would let him know.”
“Where did McClung get a SIGABA and a Collins?”
“I guess Colonel Frade brought them with him from Washington.”
“He didn’t say anything to me.”
“Maybe he had other things on his mind. I don’t think you should let Mrs. Colonel Schumann know about the radios when you’re in Pullach.”
“You don’t trust her?”
“She’s a woman. Women like to talk. She gets together with the girls at the CIC/ASA Officers’ Ladies Club. ‘You won’t believe the fancy radio I saw when I was checking on the club in the Pullach compound.’”
“Okay. Point taken, Freddy.”
“I wish she wasn’t going to the Pullach compound at all. But when I asked Major Wallace, he said we don’t want to make Colonel Schumann unhappy, which he would be if Mrs. Colonel Schumann was unhappy because she couldn’t go to the compound.”
“Well, I agree with you. I’ll see what I can do with Mattingly.”
“I don’t think he’ll want to make Colonel Schumann unhappy, either. Where do you want the radio?”
“Where would you recommend?”
“Your quarters. In a closet in your room where nobody can see it.”
“You going to tell McClung’s lieutenant, or should I?”
“You go out there and tell him. Officers don’t like enlisted men telling them what to do.”
“I never heard that.”
“I am constantly amazed at all the things you have never heard.”
“Officers don’t like smart-ass sergeants reminding them how dumb they are, either.”
“I can’t help being a smart-ass sergeant. I went to Harvard.”
“Did I ever tell you I wanted to go to Harvard?”
“No.”
“They wouldn’t let me in.”
“Why not?”
“My parents are married.”
“That’s funny. I like that. But enough of this camaraderie — since they wouldn’t let you into Harvard, I will tell you that means no more friendly good-fellowship…”
“I never heard that.”
“I am not surprised. Let’s get back to business. How do you plan to get the NKGB-er from where he is now onto the Argentine airplane?”
“Before or after we bury him — maybe before we execute him — we load him onto a Storch. And then, obviously, I fly him to Frankfurt.”
“We come back to Frankfurt in a minute, Jimmy. Let’s talk about the burying of him.”
“Okay. I don’t have much experience in this sort of thing, and happily defer to your expertise.”
“Fortunately for you, we have an expert in this sort of thing — his name is Gehlen — at Kloster Grünau. What I propose to do is work this plan out between you and me. And then, when we agree on what we think should be done, we bring General Gehlen in on it. That okay with you, Jimmy?”
Cronley thought that it was strange — even funny — that Hessinger, whom he thought of as an overeducated clerk, had even come up with a plan. But he liked him, and didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
“Fine,” Cronley said. “Go ahead.”
“The problem is that we have to do something that will look like the real thing to different groups of people. We have to fool not only the Germans who the NKGB has turned — and since we don’t know who they are, that means all the Germans — and just about all of Dunwiddie’s men.”
“Why do we have to fool Tiny’s people?”
“Because if they know what’s really going on they will talk about it, and there goes the secret.”
“Point taken.”
“We can’t do this with just Dunwiddie and Technical Sergeant Tedworth, so the first thing we have to do—”
“Why can’t we do it with just Tiny and Tedworth?”
“Who’s going to dig the grave and carry the body to it? And then fill it up again?”
“Okay.”
“We’re going to have to get five more of Tiny’s people involved.”
“Five? Just to dig the grave and—”
“Three to dig the grave and two to drive the ambulance.”
“What ambulance?”
“The one we’re going to send to that airfield near Frankfurt, the one by the senior officers’ club.”
“Eschborn? Why are we going to send an ambulance… Oh, you mean one of the transport vehicles?”
“Of course. Why would we send an ambulance to Eschborn?”
“Freddy, why are we going to send anything to Eschborn?”
“Because that’s the way we’re going to get the NKGB-er onto Rhine-Main airfield. Nobody’s going to look for a Russian agent in the back of an ex-ambulance with 711TH QM MKRC painted on its bumpers. But I am getting ahead of myself. We start with H hour, like they started D-day at Normandy.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Let me explain. We have things over which we have no control. One is when the Argentine airplane will leave Frankfurt. Another is when we shoot the NKGB-er. There we have a problem, as that has to happen in the dark, after we have the grave dug. So that is one piece of information we have to have. Three pieces. One, how long it will take to dig the grave. Two, how long it will take to carry the body from the chapel to the grave. And three, how long it will take to fill in the grave.